Follow UsThings couldn’t be better at the moment for Steve Smith, who, with five hundreds in his last 9 red-ball games, is batting as well as he has in 6 years and is also set to captain Australia in Ashes 2025/26 due to incumbent Pat Cummins nursing a serious back injury.
However, it was less than a year ago that many thought the veteran batter was ‘finished’ following his horror start to the 2024/25 Border-Gavaskar Trophy where he began the series with scores of 0, 17 & 2.
There were already doubts surrounding Smith following scores of 31, 0, 11 & 9 away in New Zealand, where he opened the batting, and the dismal start he endured in the BGT sent the world into panic mode.
In a recent interview, the 36-year-old recalled the outside noise that blew through following his golden duck in the Perth Test, where he was trapped plumb in front by Jasprit Bumrah.
“I think back to last year at Perth, I got one from Bumrah, hit me on the pad,” Smith recalled in an interview with Fox Sports.
“I remember quite a lot of people actually saying, ‘Geez, look at the position Steve’s in here.
“What’s he doing?’
“I look back at the numbers and it deviated like two-and-a-half degrees. And I’m like, ‘If I’m hitting that, I’m actually doing something horribly wrong.’
“Just for me, knowing that I’m doing the right things and then trusting it, that it’s going to work over a long period.”
The current Australian wickets are the spiciest they’ve been in decades, and Smith admitted that people overlook the fact that a batter generally needs a lot of luck to survive or go big on such bowler-friendly surfaces.
“As a batter, you’ve only got one chance. You get a good ball or you do something silly and you’re back in the sheds. Particularly on the wickets that we’re playing on at the moment, there is quite a lot in them and you need some luck to score some runs, there’s no doubt about that, particularly as a top-order player.”
He also spoke about the added pressure that comes with his record and reputation. Smith has 10,477 Test runs at an average of 56.02, and is widely regarded as one of the best batters of all time.
“Sometimes the bigger and better you get, the more you’re expected to do well,” Smith said.
”That weight of expectation can perhaps weigh on you sometimes, so managing that expectation can be a tricky game sometimes.”